U21 footballers win the B Championship

U21 FC B Final St Sylvesters 2-13 Raheny 0-13 U21 is a great competition and this final between two young fast teams lived up to the expectations of a large crowd. Raheny raced into an early lead with some excellent points but a long ball into the square from Jack was fielded by Collie Byrne who beat his man to goal and Syls never really looked back. An unnecessary sending off of one of the Raheny backs took some of the sting out of the game. As often happens, we lost our way for a while and Raheny played a more direct game, closing the gap to to three points with about 10 minutes to play.

Cian Wallnut and Dan Brennan brought a bit of dash back into our game, Cian bringing a great save out of the Raheny keeper, Scrappy and Alex also going close before Cian did finish a swift move to the net which finally put the game away.

Mick Shiels and his full back line of Niall McCann, Eoin Hammill and Aaron Lynch were very solid throughout and Raheny never really looked like goaling (except a fine early effort that came back of the post), Eamon, Dan Denniher and Scrappy held the lively Raheny half line, Scrappy playing a captains part with some great moves forward.

Jack was again deadly on the high ball, again winning numerous marks while Archie had to work hard to hold a very mobile Raheny pair.

Up front Alex was tightly marked but still managed a few penetrating runs and was very active in the last quarter, Paudi had a particularly busy first half while Jamie was very prominent in holding Raheny as they came at us in the second half. The full forward line of Luke, Dylan and Colm Byrne again looked particularly effective on fast and high ball against a physically smaller but very tenacious Raheny rearguard, Colm on fire in the first half.